


The Road Also Taken

by Yamx



Series: Deal-Series Spin-Off [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, M/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-19
Updated: 2009-09-19
Packaged: 2017-10-21 11:08:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/224520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yamx/pseuds/Yamx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a different timeline, a different Ten and a different Jack have a conversation. (This will make more sense if you read the author's note.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Road Also Taken

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dshael](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Dshael).



> You will probably need to read my fic _[Defences](http://archiveofourown.org/works/222707)_ (at least the first part) for this to make sense. _Defences_ is part of the _[Deal -series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/2804)_ – but this fic isn’t. Not really. It’s more like a spin-off. *g* In _Defences_ , due to some temporal mishaps, Nine and Jack run into Ten – but a Ten from a different timeline, i.e. not from the _Deal-verse_ (but also not from canon!). This Ten is traveling the universe with a mortal Jack and without Rose. [Dshael](http://dshael.livejournal.com/) wanted to know more about him, his Jack, and their relationship.
> 
> This story begins just at the point in _Defences_ where the two timelines separate – but instead of staying with Nine and Jack, as _Defences_ does, it follows Ten back to his TARDIS. 

“Oh,” he says cheerfully as the shapes of Jack and his younger self start to fade. “And don’t be too hard on Jack. He’s a good man, for all his flaws.” Grinning, he adds, “And besides, who’re we to complain about flaws, eh?” He winks at his younger self and chuckles at the glare he receives in return as his ninth self disappears. They’ll be all right. He’s sure of it. Jack’s clever, he’ll work out why his Doctor is so upset. And his younger self is clearly smitten with the boy – as smitten as he is with his older version. He has no doubt they’ll be okay. 

He takes a look around, lets his time sense reach out. Yes, everything feels fine. The time crash seems to have been reversed and the wounds in the time-space continuum healed. Just to be sure, he makes the TARDIS run a few scans. Can’t be too careful with a time crash. But the readings he gets are good and stable, only a few eddies in the flow indicating that anything out of the ordinary happened at all.

Satisfied, he turns and makes his way to Jack’s bedroom. He knows he’s being irrational – his Jack is fine. Probably slept through the whole thing, what with the day they had. But after seeing the younger version of his lover despondent and miserable, gutted in the face of his ninth self’s wrath, he needs to check on Jack, just to see he’s okay. Maybe get in a snuggle or two. Even in the middle of the night, Jack is never stingy with those. He smiles fondly. 

When he opens the door and finds the bed empty, he feels a wave of panic rush over him. He was sure the Doctor and Jack he met had been from a separate timeline. That they would never actually come to be him and his lover. He’s still sure, because he has no memory of going through tonight’s time crash in his ninth incarnation. But what if, somehow, this event threw off his timeline anyway? What if his younger self was stupid and threw Jack out, or made him so miserable he decided to leave, and somehow that affected his timeline and took his lover from him? On the one hand, he’s sure that’s impossible, but on the other, he has a bad track record with that word. He could be such a stuck-up git sometimes when he was younger – what if the younger him just has wrecked both their relationships? His mouth goes dry as he imagines himself hunting through time and space looking for his Jack, and trying to rectify whatever went wrong to bring him back.

When a strong pair of arms wraps around his waist from behind, his knees buckle with relief. He turns around and wraps his arms around his Jack – a good ten years older than the Jack who caused tonight’s near-catastrophe, but aged well, and in the Doctor’s eyes, more handsome than he’s ever been. 

Jack opens his mouth to say something, but the Doctor claims his lips in a deep, hungry kiss, a kiss that will let Jack know exactly how terrified he was. Jack responds willingly, pouring warmth and reassurance into the kiss. The Doctor knows that Jack can feel that something is wrong, but that’s all right. He was going to tell him anyway. He’s long past that silly notion of lying to those he loves to protect them. Jack thoroughly disabused him of that habit over the years. For one thing, he knows all his ticklish spots. 

Finally, he breaks the kiss and looks at Jack, realizing for the first time that his lover isn’t wearing anything. Not that that’s terribly surprising, of course. Jack rarely bothers with clothes when it’s just the two of them. The Doctor smirks and places a hand on Jack’s hip. “So, where did you go, all dressed up?”

Jack grins. “Woke up starving. Did you realize, after all the trouble with the Cybermen today, we went to bed without dinner?” The Doctor nods. He and Jack had been a bit… preoccupied with the sheer rush of having survived the encounter. He doesn’t need much food, of course, but he should have made sure that Jack – no, he shouldn’t have. Jack’s a big boy, and he gets really grumpy when mothered. 

Jack continues, “So, I went to the kitchen, grabbed a sandwich, then thought I’d pop by the control room to see what you were up to – and just as I was about to turn the corner I heard my own voice.” He raises an eyebrow.

The Doctor winces. “Yeah, that – complex story. Nothing to worry about. Just a little run-in with a younger us. Well, not ‘us,’ actually – clearly from a different timeline. Won’t ever be us, and I don’t think we ever quite were them – close, though. But no memories, no temporal entanglements, just a pair of blokes who could have been us if things in their timeline had gone a little differently. Which they didn’t. So there.” He looks at Jack reassuringly. “It’s all sorted now. Earlier, it had me quite worried, actually, but there was nothing you could have done, so…”

Jack nods. “Figured. You’d have got me if you wanted me there, and with another version of me already in residence, I thought it was best to make myself scarce. Blinovitch and all that.”

The Doctor nods. Good move. Jack may not be a Time Lord, but his Time Agency training, his sharp wit and intelligence, and his experience traveling with the Doctor for over a decade often make a damn fine substitute for inborn time sense.

“Wasn’t sure my room would be safe – he might have come here – so I went to the one place I was pretty sure I wouldn’t find myself.”

The Doctor grins, looking Jack up and down pointedly. “Wardrobe room?”

“Oi!” In addition to good instincts for timelines, Jack has picked up some of his verbal quirks over the years. “The banana green house.” 

The Doctor chuckles. “Let’s get back into bed. You must be freezing.”

“Nah, not really. Old girl’s been keeping me warm.” He pats the wall affectionately, then smirks. “But I’m not saying no on getting into bed with you.” There’s something off. Just the slightest hitch in his voice. Tension in the lines of his forehead. The Doctor frowns. Just a few years back, he wouldn’t have picked up on that.

“Something’s bothering you. What is it?” he asks simply. Jack is just as good at giving honesty as he is at demanding it.

Jack shakes his head and pushes past him into the bedroom. “It’s… not important, okay?”

The Doctor watches him get back under the blanket. He starts taking off his tie, raising an eyebrow at Jack.

“I’ll get over it and it’s nothing you want to hear,” Jack says with a cheerful and reassuring smile that tells the Doctor he absolutely means it. It also clues him in on what this is about.

“So,” he starts, divesting himself of his jacket and shirt. “Any other voices you heard while you were near the control room?”

Jack looks at him with equal parts guilt and amusement. “You know me too well.”

Stepping out of his trousers, he sits next to Jack on the bed, cupping his chin in one hand. “It’s okay to miss him, Jack. Really.”

“It’s been nine years. And, as you never get tired of pointing out, there’s no “him.” I didn’t lose you.”

The Doctor crawls under the blanket and wraps a gangly arm over Jack’s chest. “Yup. That’s why I’m not jealous that you miss the old me sometimes. That’s who you fell in love with.” 

Jack covers the Doctor’s hand with his, entwining their fingers. “How was he?”

He smirks. “Dark, judgmental and grumpy.” 

Jack laughs. “Yep, sounds about right.”

He squeezes Jack’s hand. “Also very much in love with the younger you. Completely incapable of saying it, of course, but it was there in every look, every gesture. Chewed me out for being tactless with him.”

“Tactless? You? Surely not!” Jack chuckles.

The Doctor slides their joined hands up to Jack’s ribs and pokes the tender spot just below his right nipple, making him squirm. “That’s quite enough of your lip, or do you want me to…” He feels Jack’s free hand sneak around to rest on his stomach and quickly changes the subject. “Anyway, I think Rose was still traveling with them!”

Jack blinks in surprise. “Really?”

The Doctor nods. “I didn’t see her, but there was a sweater hanging over one of the struts in the control room that looked like hers – well, smelled like hers too.” His superior Time Lord senses allowed him to pick up on that simply by standing near the strut, without having to do anything as obvious as sniffing the sweater. 

Jack considers this. “Nice to think that I didn’t ruin your friendship everywhere.”

The Doctor nuzzles his shoulder. “You didn’t here, either. She was in love with me. I loved her, but not the way she wanted me to. That would never have ended well, anyway. You coming along just sped things up.”

“I still feel bad that she left because of me.” 

“She didn’t. It was just painful for her to see me with someone else – anyone else. No one’s fault. And when _she_ fell in love with that other bloke…”A Reftonian space explorer from her own time. Life full of fun and adventure, though without time travel. But it had been what Rose needed – a man who loved her as much as she loved him, and who was capable of showing her the universe and dropping her off for tea with her mum every once in a while. The parting had been painful for all of them, but they’d parted as friends, knowing that it was the right decision. 

They promised to stay in touch, and they have – about once a year, linear time, they all meet at Jackie’s place for tea, then go off on some nice pleasure trip together. Well, when he says “nice pleasure trip” – but it’s really not his fault that they usually end up running for their lives. Still, they always have a grand old time, and there’s no bitterness on either side about Rose’s leaving. 

Not too long after she left, he regenerated in a run-in with Daleks – in Manhattan, of all places! – and quite frankly he’d been glad then that she was no longer with them. Jack had only made it out alive because of his combat training and endurance. Had Rose still been traveling with them, they’d probably have lost her… 

Of course, there’s bound to be a timeline where that’s the case. Countless ones, actually. Timelines where he got Rose killed, or lost her, or stranded her somewhere… He mumbles a few words in Gallifreyan under his breath.

“What was that?” Jack looks at him curiously. The TARDIS doesn’t translate Gallifreyan, though she’s been known to override that order for Jack’s benefit a few times. But only in life-or-death situations.

“Old Gallifreyan proverb. ‘Everything happens somewhere.’ Well, should be more like ‘absolutely everything, without any exceptions imaginable or unimaginable.’ And ‘somewhere’ is not really a good translation, either, it’s really closer to ‘in some dimension, some time, some universe, some temporal flow, some probability, and some…’ and I don’t even have English words for the rest, which explains why the concept translates so badly, really. Linguistic universals, my Aunt Fanny.” 

Jack looks pensive. “Everything happens somewhere… I’d never really thought about it that way, but stands to reason.”

“Yes. Every choice made or not made. Every chance event. Always ends both ways. Just not in the same timeline. Can give you a headache when you think about it too much. Well, it gives me a headache. You, it probably would make your head explode.” He squeals when Jack answers that with a quick squeeze to the soft flesh underneath his navel. 

“There’s timelines where you and she worked out, but you and I didn’t? And…” He leers. “Timelines where all three of us did?” 

The Doctor feels his eyebrows shoot up. Typical that that’s where Jack’s thoughts would go. Much more refreshing than his own thoughts of all the different ways he must have lost Rose in other timelines, though. “All of those and more, Jack. Everything you can imagine, there’s a timeline somewhere where it’s true. Everything you can’t imagine, too.”

Jack grins mischievously. “What – you mean there’s a timeline out there where you’re better-looking than me?” he says, his eyes wide with feigned shock.

The Doctor pretends to look offended, then he laughs. “Jack, there’re probably timelines out there where you’re a disembodied head in a goldfish bowl!”

“Oi! What’ve you got against my body all of a sudden?” Jack nips his earlobe sharply, making lovely shivers run down his spine. 

The Doctor almost purrs, and presses the full length of his frame tightly against Jack. “Except _my_ body, you mean?” He grins impishly. “Nothing at all. I’m quite fond of your body, really.”

“Prove it,” Jack whispers, sucking the sensitive spot on the ridge of his ear in a way that makes it hard to focus. 

With an effort, the Doctor pulls himself together and rolls on top of Jack. “Well, firstly, I like your lips.” He kisses them – a short, teasing peck, pulling back when Jack tries for more. “Also, I‘m quite enchanted by your nose-” A peck there, too. “-and eyes.” He ghosts his lips over them. “Furthermore, I think your neck is just brilliant!” He licks up the right side of Jack’s neck, and, ignoring his squeal and attempt to wriggle away, down the left. “I especially like the taste!” With a teasing grin, he repeats the motion half an inch further up. Jack is chuckling and wriggling hard by now – and that’s not the only thing hard about him, the Doctor realizes with amusement. _Something_ is pressing into his hipbone rather uncomfortably. He slowly and sensually licks Jack’s collarbones, then pushes himself into a sitting position astride his lover’s thighs. 

The Doctor grins at Jack challengingly. “If you manage to hold _very_ still, I can show you exactly what other parts of your body I like the taste of. One by one.” He throws a speculative glance at Jack’s chest, ribs, abs, stomach, and what’s lower down. “Of course, you probably can’t manage to contain your excitement until I get to the spots you _really_ want me to pay attention to.” If he knows his Jack, and he does, the lad will be unable to resist a challenge, providing the Doctor with a wonderful excuse for lots and lots of leisurely tasting. Jack’s 51 st century pheromones were designed for humans, but oh, they do pack a lovely punch when applied to a Time Lord, too. And this could take hours, if he can stand to be that cruel to Jack. He chuckles quietly. 

Jack is looking back and forth between the Doctor, the length of his body, and his straining and attentive cock. His eyes say he knows exactly what he’s in for – but also what the rewards will be. With a sigh and a mumbled “bastard,” he nods. “You’re on. But you better make it worth my while.” 

The Doctor laughs and they sink into a deep, tender and yet hot kiss. Pulling back after what seems like hours (but in reality was only one hundred and forty-seven seconds) he cocks his head. “Don’t I always?”

Jack’s gaze is dazed, his eyes almost black. His mouth slowly curves into a goofy grin. “Not been disappointed yet.” 

*****

The next morning, Jack is in the kitchen preparing breakfast, whistling to himself. He’s making pancakes. They are the Doctor’s favorite, but the Time Lord is utterly incapable of making them. Every time he tries, he ends up with a chaotic kitchen and a culinary catastrophe. Well, except for that one time when he ended up with a fire. After that, the TARDIS had had enough. Now, if the Doctor even goes near the kitchen with the thought of making pancakes, all frying pans disappear, the hearth stops functioning, and the fridge refuses to open. 

Chuckling at the thought, he measures out the sungoberries for his own breakfast and, wrinkling his nose, cubes two bananas for the Doctor’s. The things we do for love. He divides the batter into two parts and is stirring in the fruit when he hears footsteps approaching. 

“Oh, are you making pancakes? You lovely, lovely thing!” The Doctor bounds over to him and gives him a big, slobbery kiss. Clearly, the excitement from last night hasn’t worn off yet. He laughs into his lover’s mouth as he returns the snog. 

The Doctor starts pulling the tea things out of the cupboard. “So, what do you want to do today?”

Jack smiles. “Oh, you know, the usual. Help the helpless, defeat monsters, protect endangered civilizations, go shopping…” He grins.

The Doctor laughs as he measures out the tea. Then his voice becomes serious. “Jack…” 

Jack puts down the batter and turns towards the Doctor. That voice always gets his undivided attention.

The Doctor takes his hand and stares at his palm, avoiding his gaze. “I was rubbish at domestics when we met, and while I know I’ve got better – I mean, I think I’ve got bet- err, that is, I hope…”

Jack silences him with a kiss. Then he cups the Doctor’s chin and makes him look at him. “You’ve got better. Now, what is it? You’re making me nervous.”

“Nervous? No! Sorry, no. I just wanted to say… I mean, I don’t normally say stuff like this… and neither do you, so I guess that’s okay, right? Just us, the way we tick, really, two blokes together in-” Noticing Jack’s raised eyebrow, he clears his throat.

“Right. I just want you to know: of all the possibilities, in all the timelines, I’m glad I got to be in this one. I’m really glad, Jack.” 

Jack smiles and leans closer, capturing his lips in a kiss. He pays special attention to the secret spot behind the Doctor’s teeth that always makes him go wild, and feels pleased when his lover goes limp and leans against him. Pulling back, he grins cockily. “Yeah, Doctor. I love you too.” True, neither of them says it much, but while the Doctor will find inventive ways to say it without saying it, Jack has no problem saying the words right out. If the mood is right.

The Doctor beams at him and bounces back to the counter. “So, tea and pancakes – hmmmmm, banana – and then off into time and space. I think it feels like a randomizer button kind of day, don’t you?”

The End


End file.
